Isolated: Conflict

by James Jacques

The starship, named Phoenix, was built to send two hundred individuals on an epic voyage through the stars to a distant world upon which to start an off‐earth colony. The launch was set to vector at high speed away from Betelgeuse, a massive star in the constellation Orion due to go supernova. A planetoid was found in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. It was cold, had a toxic atmosphere, and appeared to have no life, but was promising. A Colony, New Terra, was established and after several years a splinter group separated and formed a second colony Trinity. For a couple of years, the two colonies exchanged trade; free flow of information, regular communications and visitations. But increasingly Trinity began closing down all access and communications with New Terra. Since that time, the Trinity defense network began to get quarrelsome. Trinity drones, for no apparent cause except to terrorize New Terra activities, had attacked several exploratory scouts. Not wishing to provoke a conflict, New Terra decided not to make an issue of the events. This angered the families of the victims so attacked but it did preserve the peace. Or so they thought.

282 pages, Paperback

Published December 16, 2024